Mr Fortune's Maggot by Sylvia Townsend Warner

Mr Fortune's Maggot by Sylvia Townsend Warner

The Reverend Timothy Fortune, ex-clerk of the Hornsey Branch of Lloyds Bank, has spent ten years as a South Seas Island missionary when a 'maggot' impels him to embark on what he describes as a 'sort of pious escapade' - an assignment to the even more remote island of Fanua, where a white man is a rarity. Mr Fortune is a good man, humble, earnest - he wishes to bring the joys of Christianity to the innocent heathen. But in his three years on Fanua he makes only one convert - the boy Lueli, who loves him. This love, and the sensuous freedom of the islanders produces in Mr Fortune a change of heart which is shattering... Beautifully imagined, the paradise island and its people are as vivid as a Gauguin painting. Told with the driest of wise humour, touching and droll by turns, its theme - that we can never love anything without messing it about - is only one of the delights of this enchanting book.

One can't be too thankful that Miss Townsend Warner has lived to discover the alchemist s' secret of transmuting the past and the possible, and even the impossible now and then, into pure gold * HILARY SPURLING, OBSERVER *
One of our most idiosyncratic, courageous and versatile writers * HERMIONE LEE *

Born in Harrow (1893-1978), Sylvia Townsend Warner published seven novels, four volumes of poetry, a volume of essays and eight volumes of short stories. She lived most of her adult life with her close companion Valentine Ackland in Dorset and Norfolk.

SKU	Unavailable
ISBN 13	9780860680437
ISBN 10	0860680436
Title	Mr Fortune's Maggot
Author	Sylvia Townsend Warner
Series	Virago Modern Classics
Condition	Unavailable
Binding Type	Paperback
Publisher	Little, Brown Book Group
Year published	1984-01-12
Number of pages	256
Cover note	Book picture is for illustrative purposes only, actual binding, cover or edition may vary.
Note	Unavailable